Spring Statement

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I assume that my hon. Friend is referring to the previous Conservative Chancellor but one, in which case I think our right hon. and learned Friend has probably heard him.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The winter crisis in the NHS left us with cancelled operations, ditched targets, patients sleeping on the floor, and a public apology in the end from the Prime Minister. Neither the spring nor the spring statement has provided any easing of those pressures. Given that the right hon. Gentleman knows the November Budget will be too late to provide any additional funding that he knows both the NHS and social care will need for next year’s winter crisis—he knows this both in his heart and in his spreadsheet—will he now follow the Prime Minister and announce a public apology to the staff and patients of the NHS who are going to have to endure next year’s crisis because of this failure?

[Mr Hammond]

I have already made it clear that we admire greatly the work of NHS staff who, with the pressures of flu and extreme winter weather, faced extremely difficult circumstances this winter. This is a spring statement, not a fiscal event, but I have said and I will say again to the right hon. Lady that we are putting an additional £4 billion into the NHS in 2018-19, and I have committed to putting in further money in-year in 2018-19 to fund a pay settlement for nurses and “Agenda for Change” staff, if the management and the unions reach an agreement.

Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 8th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

My right hon. and learned Friend raises an important point. The Government are indeed saying that we recognise the importance of ensuring that we have a smooth and frictionless trading situation between ourselves and the European Union once we have left it. Although we will have left the European Union, the Bill will facilitate our ability to have similarities in the way in which we trade. It will then be up to us to decide how we deviate from our starting point. We see the current position, under the European Union code—the customs code and the legislation in the European acquis—as a starting point to which we need to be reasonably aligned, even though we might diverge from it in the years ahead as a result of the negotiations, if that would be to the benefit of our country.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Minister has clarified that it is the Government’s intention to continue with the existing customs arrangements, and that the Bill will allow for the possibility of a continued customs union. Can he also confirm that the content of any new customs arrangements or customs union will be decided only through secondary legislation, rather than through primary legislation? Would it not be better to have a proper vote on the Floor of the House on primary legislation on whether we should stay in a customs union?

Exiting the EU: Costs

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

As my right hon. Friend points out, it is important that we move on to the next stage of the negotiations and talk about our long-term relationship with the European Union once we have left. That is exactly what we seek to do.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The problem with the Chief Secretary’s answer is that all our constituents saw the slogan on the side of a bus. If the Government simply say nothing—if they keep radio silence for a long time—and then suddenly pluck a figure out of a hat at the end of the process, it will just be incomprehensible to everyone. Surely she can tell the House the kinds of things that the Government think they should be funding—pension contributions or whatever else—rather than just leaving everyone in the dark.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I refer the right hon. Lady to the Prime Minister’s Florence speech, in which she laid out the commitments that we want to continue to honour, in the spirit of our future partnership, after we have left the European Union. The right hon. Lady has to be aware that this is part of a discussion that is also about our future relationship, and all those elements are contingent on securing our future relationship, as the Prime Minister laid out in her Florence speech. It would be wrong at this stage—from the point of view of not only the negotiations, but transparency to the public—to lay out something before it is fully agreed. That would not be helpful.

Class 4 National Insurance Contributions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Angela Knight is the chairman of the Office of Tax Simplification, and we will of course seek its advice in this matter. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

May I just confirm the slightly astonishing thing that the Chancellor said a few moments ago—that the first person to raise the Tory manifesto with him was the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg? Is it actually the case that nobody in No. 10 and nobody in No. 11 checked the Conservative manifesto before he wrote the Budget?

[Mr Hammond]

I did say that, but let me be clear: I think that Laura Kuenssberg was the first person after I spoke to raise the issue outside. The Government have always been clear, as I said on Wednesday evening and on Thursday, many times, and the Prime Minister said on Thursday evening, that we have always regarded the legislated tax locks as being the commitment we were working to. Our whole approach in the Treasury—all the work we do—is based around the tax locks that are in place. I accept, however, that there is a gap between the specific tax locks that were legislated and the wording that was used in the manifesto. We have today accepted that the more expansive interpretation should be the one that prevails, and that is why I have made the statement that I have.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I am coming on to talk about disability benefits, but my right hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the support we give—close to £50 billion—to disabled people. When we look just at the disability benefits, disability living allowance and personal independence payment, we see that that support has gone up from £13 billion when we came into office to £16 billion today, and it will go up to £18 billion in the future. As my excellent right hon. Friend for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), the new Welfare Secretary, made clear yesterday, we continue to give support to disabled people. I will come on to deal with that in detail.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Chancellor boasted when he opened the debate that this was the first time a Chancellor had opened the final day of a Budget debate. He will know that that is because it is also the first time a Chancellor has had to drop the biggest revenue raiser in his Budget within two days of announcing it. The former Work and Pensions Secretary, who has just resigned and to whom the Chancellor paid great tribute, described the Budget as “deeply unfair” and “drifting” in a wrong direction that will divide the country, not unite it. He said all those words after the Chancellor announced that he was ditching the PIP cuts. Is the former Work and Pensions Secretary deluded?

[Mr Osborne]

I am glad that the right hon. Lady intervened, because I have done a little research and, frankly, I wish that when she was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury we had seen a few more revenue raisers in Budgets, such as savings in welfare and savings in public expenditure. During the period in which she was the Chief Secretary, the deficit went from £76 billion a year to £154 billion a year. The measures that my right hon. Friend and I have been taking over the last six years are to clear up the mess that she and her colleagues in government left.

[Mr Osborne]

Let me make a little more progress, and then I will come back. The proof that these difficult changes are worth while—

[Yvette Cooper]

Will the Chancellor give way?

[Mr Osborne]

I will give way to the right hon. Lady. I have said that when we have made a mistake, we have listened and learned. When is she going to apologise and say that she made mistakes and her colleagues made mistakes during that period in government, which is what we have been clearing up for the last six years?

[Yvette Cooper]

The Chancellor did not address the issue of the unfairness of his Budget, so will he address the issue of the revenue behind his Budget? He has abandoned £4.4 billion in revenue raisers from his Budget. Where is that money going to come from, or will he change the scorecard that he set out?

[Mr Osborne]

I will tell you what is unfair: to saddle the next generation with debts you have no way of paying off. That is what the right hon. Lady did. [Interruption.] That is what she did. I will come on specifically to disability benefits, but let me tell her about fairness and what we have done over the last six years. We have taken action that means 500,000 fewer children are growing up in workless households than when she was at the Treasury, 1 million fewer people are on out-of-work benefits and over 2 million more people are in work than when we came to office. That is the social justice record we on this side of the House are proud of.

I am also proud that the work continues, and in this Budget we are taking further steps to build a stronger society. There is money and reform to improve our nation’s schools. There is action to reduce sugar intake and give our children better healthcare. There is support for the savings of low-income families. There is more help and housing for homeless people. There are personal allowance increases that will lift another 1 million of the low-paid out of income tax altogether, and there is an increased minimum wage ahead of the introduction of the first ever national living wage in just two weeks’ time. Those are all in the Budget we will debate today—all the actions of a compassionate, one nation Conservative Government determined to deliver both social justice and economic security.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Osborne]

Let me make some progress. We have taken difficult decisions to control public expenditure and reduce a crippling budget deficit.

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[Mr Osborne]

I have given way twice to the right hon. Lady so I will now make progress and explain what we have done to clear up the mess she left. We took more decisions last week in the Budget, but we will also implement these decisions today to ensure that the work of reducing our deficit is done fairly, and that we ask more from the well-off. Look through the measures. They include provisions on dividends, lifetime pension allowances, stamp duty on second properties, banks and hedge funds, and a host of measures to tackle evasion and avoidance. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has been quoted a lot over the past four days in the Budget debates, and its head stated that

“the very highest earners have seen significant tax increases”.

I think that has been a reasonable thing to ask of the most well-off when faced with such a budget deficit, because we are all in this together.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell]

Let me finish this point.

The simple fact is that the sums in the Budget, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, simply do not add up anymore. They simply do not compute.

[Yvette Cooper]

The shadow Chancellor will be aware that page 26 of the Red Book states that the Chancellor will set out plans to meet the welfare cap by this autumn, and that page 198 of the OBR report says that that will require further welfare savings of £3 billion a year. Did he hear the Chancellor say clearly this afternoon that he was going to ditch the plans for £3 billion a year of additional welfare cuts by the end of this Parliament?

[John McDonnell]

Cuts upon cuts, and who to? The most vulnerable in our society.

Budget Changes

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

The decision was taken some weeks ago not to proceed with any changes to VAT on energy-saving materials in this Finance Bill because new evidence had emerged and we no longer believed that we needed to go ahead with what was previously suggested. It is also the case—the Prime Minister will say something about this later—that because the European Commission and other member states are willing to agree to our arguments about the need for greater flexibility on VAT rates, we do not believe that these changes will be necessary.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Five days ago, the Chancellor stood at that Dispatch Box and published the Budget scorecard with a £4.4 billion cut to PIP. Where is the revised scorecard without it? Is it true that this cut will instead come from elsewhere in the DWP budget? If the Chancellor is too scared to answer questions in this House on the issue, he is not fit to do the job.

[Mr Gauke]

The Chancellor will debate the Budget resolutions tomorrow evening, and he will be the first Chancellor of the Exchequer to have done so since my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke). In 11 Budgets, Gordon Brown never once participated in the debate on the Budget apart from in his initial speech. As far as the public finances and compliance with the welfare cap are concerned, we will set things out at the autumn statement. Let us be absolutely clear that with the Labour party appearing to be upset about the public finances, Labour Members should listen to what they have been saying for the last six years.

Finance (No. 4) Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2012 Commons Chamber

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Hood. Have you had any indication whether the Home Secretary will come to the House either this evening or tomorrow morning to make a further statement on Abu Qatada? She is currently in the television studios addressing the issue that has emerged this afternoon, which is that the Home Office may have got the dates wrong and may have illegally arrested Abu Qatada yesterday. Do you not think it would be appropriate for the Home Secretary to come to the House, clear up this shambles and let the House know what is going on?

Proposed Public Expenditure Cuts

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

It is an improvement on the situation under the previous Government, where there was absolutely no contact between the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Chancellor. The two Departments are working very well. Obviously the Treasury is interested in financial management and control: that is a proper part of our function. My right hon. Friend has inspirational plans that he has worked on to reform welfare and get people working, and the two of us are working together with colleagues in the Cabinet to make that happen.

Let me finally say something about the tax gap and people who do not pay their taxes. Later this week, figures will be produced—independent figures, not produced by me—which will show the latest situation on the tax gap that we have inherited: in other words, the gap between what should be collected in tax and what is collected in tax at the moment. Judging by previous figures I have seen, I think that the House will be pretty staggered by this number. [Interruption.] Labour Members seem to forget that their people were in power for 13 years. We have inherited this situation, and we will be taking steps to reduce tax avoidance, including tax avoidance by the richest people in our society, so that everyone makes a contribution.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The shadow Chancellor and the shadow Chief Secretary are not in Westminster today, Mr Speaker, and you will be aware that I had asked a similar urgent question of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, so it is good that the Chancellor is replying, although very unfortunate that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has chosen not to come to respond.

On Thursday, the Chancellor told the BBC that the Government were cutting an additional £4 billion from out-of-work benefits. The BBC website says:

“The government is planning to reduce the annual welfare bill by a further £4bn, Chancellor George Osborne has told the BBC.”

Today, he has refused to tell the House what he told the BBC. Did the BBC correspondents just get it wrong? Did they mishear what he said? Will he now come clean and tell us what he has in fact got agreed and planned for the additional cuts that he wants to make to the welfare bills for the spending review? Will he tell us whether the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has agreed to £4 billion of additional cuts? Will he admit that the timing of this interview had nothing to do with reaching agreement on the spending review with the Work and Pensions Secretary and everything to do with getting Andy Coulson off the BBC headlines for the day?

In June, the Chancellor wrote to the Secretary of State:

“I am pleased that you, the prime minister, and I have agreed to press ahead with reforms to the ESA as part of the spending review that deliver net savings of at least £2.5bn by 2014/15.”

His Chief Secretary said yesterday that this was not agreed; well, is it agreed or isn’t it?

The Chancellor is not being straight with the House—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) is normally a pretty equable fellow; he is getting a little over-excited. I must ask the right hon. Lady to withdraw that term. No Minister would be other than straight with the House. She will find another word, I feel sure.

[Yvette Cooper]

I certainly accept your point, Mr Speaker. I am sure that no Minister would want not to be straight with the House, and I am sure that the Chancellor will be. I withdraw any suggestion that he was not, because I am sure that he will be.

Will the Chancellor confirm, therefore, that saving an additional £4 billion from getting people into work will require new jobs for 800,000 people, at a time when his own Office for Budget Responsibility says that far from creating an extra 800,000 jobs, his Budget will cut 100,000 jobs from the economy in each and every year?

The Chancellor has also said that he plans to target the workshy and those who are fit for work. Will he confirm, however, that savings from getting those who are fit for work off sickness benefits are already built into the Treasury figures, and that cutting an extra £2.5 billion from employment support allowance would hit only those who have been through the new, tougher test and who even his Ministers agree are genuinely too sick or too disabled to work? Is it not the truth that he is planning to cut the level of support for some of the most vulnerable people in society? Will he confirm that someone who is on employment support allowance, and has been through the test, is already facing a £285 cut in the value of their ESA and an average £650 cut in their housing benefit as a result of his plans?

The Chancellor claims to support jobs and to be progressive, but he is doing the opposite. The truth is that his plans hit the poorest harder than the rich, women harder than men and children and pensioners worst of all. Now he has shown that he is targeting those who are most sick and disabled in society. Is it not the truth that he has decided to hit those who he knows will find it harder to fight back? This is not progressive; it is a nasty attack, and he should withdraw it now.

[Mr Osborne]

First of all, I note that there has still not been a word of apology about leaving this country with the worst public finances in its history. Nor, by the way, has there been an apology for the complete failure, by the right hon. Lady and her predecessors as Secretary of State, to reform the welfare system, despite all those promises.

In the Budget speech, I made it very clear that we were looking for additional savings from welfare. If the Labour party wants to propose some ideas to make up its £44 billion part of the savings package, perhaps it will contribute to this debate. Sadly, at the moment, we have had absolutely no ideas from it. It opposed the VAT rise; the pay freeze; the in-year savings; the housing benefit reforms; the tax credit reforms; the switch to the consumer prices index for benefits; and the abolition of child trust funds. It opposed all those things. They are £33 billion worth of cuts.

Where are the Labour party’s numbers? Where are its ideas? If it wants to engage with us in a real debate about how we reform welfare, protect the most vulnerable and help people who can work into work, we will be all ears. But at the moment there is a deafening silence from the Labour party.

The right hon. Lady talks about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions not being here. He happens to be at a conference in Europe about international labour market reforms. The shadow Chancellor is not here, and nor is a single one of the Labour party leadership contenders. That is because instead of talking about the national interest, they are courting the votes of vested interests.

Finance Bill

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

rose—

[Danny Alexander]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman and then to the right hon. Lady.

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Alexander]

I give way to the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who tried to intervene first.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I am rushing to get to the ballot box—[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman is welcome to come to the ballot box too, if he so wishes. He will know that not only does chart A2 include the Labour measures from the March Budget, but it does not go beyond 2012-13 and does not include housing benefit. Is he also aware that the House of Commons analysis has shown that more than 70% of about £8 billion of direct tax and benefit measures introduced in his Budget are being paid by women? What figure does the Treasury put on the proportion of those direct tax and benefit measures being paid for by women?

[Danny Alexander]

There were a lot of questions there but not a single apology for the record of the previous Government. The single measure announced by the previous Government that is included in the charts in the Budget Book is the national insurance change. We have chosen to introduce that measure, so it is legitimate that we have included it in the charts. Other measures that affect people on higher incomes such as the increase in capital gains tax for higher rate taxpayers, which the previous Government never chose to introduce, cannot be included in the tables, so the impact on the wealthiest may even be greater than is illustrated in the charts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Danny Alexander]

I do not have the figure to hand, but I will happily let the hon. Gentleman know at a future date or write to him with the precise figures he is looking for.

The measures that we are taking, rightly, close the avoidance issue that arose under the system put in place by the previous Government, whereby someone who was taking a substantial bonus, for example, in capital gains could pay less tax than the person who cleaned their office. [Interruption.] I am being asked if that was fair. I certainly do not think it was fair—it was highly unfair. That is why we have chosen to try to reduce that avoidance risk. The hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) will know that the yield from the measures that we have taken comes in large measure from income tax, which reflects the fact that that sort of avoidance was going on.

[Yvette Cooper]

I thank the Chief Secretary for his generosity in giving way. I will give him one more chance to answer this important question: has the Treasury done any analysis of the direct impact of the tax and benefit measures on women, separately from men? Does he know?

[Danny Alexander]

I am not sure that that analysis was carried out under the previous Government. We are the first Government to have published analysis of the impact across the income distribution, and we have conducted specific analysis of the impact on child poverty. It is notable that the House of Commons analysis assumes that women will be the only people affected by changes in benefits that are targeted on families. It does not make any allowance for the way incomes may be shared within the household, and as a result it may well exaggerate the impact of Budget measures on women’s incomes.

The Budget includes a number of measures to ensure fairness for pensioners. For example, it locks in an annual increase in the state pension in line with earnings, prices or a 2.5% increase, whichever is the highest—the so-called triple lock—to the benefit of 11 million pensioners. It also enables individuals to make more flexible use of their pension savings. The Government intend to end the existing rules that create an effective obligation to purchase an annuity by age 75 from April 2011. Clause 6 provides interim measures to raise the age at which a person is required to purchase an annuity, or otherwise secure a pension income, from 75 to 77. That is to protect those who might otherwise be forced to annuitise before the new rules that we are seeking to introduce come into place. We will consult interested parties on the detail of that change later this month.

Economic Affairs and Work and Pensions

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst)]

Order. [Laughter.] I am not sure that that was not grossly out of order.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I add congratulations and warm support from this side of the House. We are grateful to you for your many years of kind consideration for all Members of the House, Back Benchers and Front Benchers, and for your fairness over the years.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I fear that this is getting worse. [Laughter.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I begin by paying tribute to the hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches this evening and have given us thoughtful, elegant and eloquent speeches. We have toured the nation—the hills, the valleys, the coasts and the cities. They have been wise speeches. Given the number of people who have paid tribute to their local newspapers as well as to their constituents, remind me to mention the Pontefract and Castleford Express rather more often.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) began the maiden speeches and was typically modest in not mentioning the impact of the work that she did on child poverty before she was elected. The hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) gave us an eloquent speech, in which he confessed to having been a banker in a previous life—a brave thing to do. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) told us about Nye Bevan’s warning of collusion between Liberal Democrats and Tories—a rare example of a Nye Bevan understatement, I fear.

The hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) talked about her commitment to new jobs in her constituency. The hon. Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) laid claim to having one of the most beautiful constituencies in the country; I suspect he may be right. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) invited us all to go quad biking in his constituency, and the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) also talked about tourism in his constituency and paid a lovely tribute to Betty Williams, which we would all support. The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) paid a gracious tribute to the changes on lesbian and gay equalities that have taken place in the last few Parliaments. The hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) talked about the importance of investment in jobs in Northern Ireland—so too did the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long)—and the importance of economic development as part of the peace process.

The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson) talked about support for manufacturing. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) raised the subject of energy efficiency and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) drew on her experience and talent as a Bank of England economist to warn powerfully of the risks of a contractionary Japanese experience. The hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) talked about social housing. My hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) paid tribute to the visionaries and social campaigners rooted in London’s east end and showed she would be a strong MP in the same tradition.

The hon. Members for Worcester (Mr Walker) and for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) both paid respectful tributes to their fathers, who were both their predecessors, although I must say I thought that Hyacinth Bucket was in “Keeping up Appearances”, not “One Foot in the Grave”. But we also had scenes from “Gavin and Stacey” from the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), who spoke about the importance of the economy to his constituency. The hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) told us he was a skydiver and began to dissect global capitalism.

I missed the speech by the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), but my mum and dad live in his constituency, so I hope he will look after them well. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) shared her concern about long-term unemployment in Birmingham. I cannot quite read my handwriting, but I think it must say that the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) talked about farming—seeing as it is Norfolk. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) talked about the importance of engineering, seeing as it is Stockton North.

We spent quite a lot of time in Edinburgh today. In the course of the day we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), who gave us a funny and witty speech just as we were starting to get tired for the evening; my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), who talked about the festival in her constituency; and the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart), who talked about the zoo in his constituency—very appropriate, now that he has joined us in this place.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) talked about defending England against the Scots, and the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) managed to amuse us while pretending not to be amusing at all—in which I detect an echo of his brother, perhaps, after all.

The hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) talked about the importance of local communities. The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) gave us a Shakespearean tour, and I think signed up to being the first of the rebels among the new Members on his side. The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) told us a lovely story about his constituency’s Domesday roots and my hon. Friends the Members for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) and for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) both talked about the importance of not axing the future jobs fund. I was going to pay tribute to the parents of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East, who sat through the entire debate but decided to leave before the closing speeches began—perhaps wisely.

I congratulate the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), on his appointment. I know it is an appointment that he will relish, because he has a genuine interest in issues concerning poverty and families suffering from deprivation. I welcome too his Front-Bench colleagues, although I think they will be having an interesting time.

The Secretary of State said in his speech last week that he wanted clear and evidence-based policies, but he has in charge of employment statistics the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), the man who said that crime was going up when in fact it was going down and was roundly rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority, the police and even the London Mayor for his lack of factual accuracy; so we look forward to those economic statistics debates.

The Secretary of State has also said that he wants to cut poverty, but as part of his team he has the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), whom I very much respect. He told the House last year that

“the idea that the Conservative party is the answer to child poverty is amazing.”—[Official Report, 9 December 2009; Vol. 502, c. 457.]

He also said:

“To hear Conservative Front Benchers suggest that they even care about this subject…is frankly unbelievable.”—[Official Report, 20 July 2009; Vol. 496, c. 625.]

He has also stated:

“The reason unemployment has risen so rapidly in the UK is not because people have suddenly become workshy, but because the jobs are not there.

These Tory plans for benefit reform will not do anything to change that.”

We thought that the hon. Gentleman might have a few tensions with the Treasury about his plans, but it seems that the real fractious relationships are within his own team. If the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister are the happy couple in the rose garden, it seems that the Secretary of State has finally been granted his wish of being put in charge of dealing with dysfunctional families who are at risk of breakdown.

The Secretary of State has high ambitions. We will support him where we can. We will, of course, support measures to restore the pensions link with earnings. We will not support ripping up the rest of the Turner consensus, putting future pensions for low and middle-income earners at risk. We will support the Secretary of State where he brings forward genuine proposals that help to reduce poverty and disadvantage, but we will not support plans to water down the child poverty target and we would be extremely concerned by proposals to freeze all benefits below inflation.

The Secretary of State did some serious work on policy options at the Centre for Social Justice—on benefit reform and on measures to help to ensure that people are better off in work. We will look very sympathetically at those and we are interested in the proposals that he made when he was in opposition, but his case would be considerably stronger if he accepted that hundreds of thousands of families throughout the country are thousands of pounds a year better off as a result of the minimum wage and the tax credits that he and his party strongly opposed.

I hope, too, that the Government will continue the implementation of the reforms to sickness benefits and to lone parent benefits that we introduced and were starting to roll out. Those reforms and the investment in support to help the unemployed have already cut the number of people on inactive benefits by more than 350,000 since 1997. The combination of extra investment and support alongside benefit reforms and stronger requirements to take up that help have made a big difference. It is unfortunate that both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats voted against some of our stronger requirements on benefit claimants in the previous Parliament.

I hope that the Secretary of State will recognise the good work that Jobcentre Plus did to respond to the recession. As a result of the extra investment and the hard work of those staff, the claimant count peaked at 5% in this recession, compared with 10% in the 1990s recession and in the 1980s recession. That was possible only because of the extra investment in jobs alongside the tougher conditions on benefits. That is why it is so shocking that his first priority is to cut the future jobs fund. That is up to 80,000 youth jobs gone when the Chancellor himself has said that youth unemployment is still too high. I have to ask Government Front Benchers: did they talk to a single young person on the future jobs fund before cutting those jobs? Did they talk to a single voluntary sector provider before they cut the funding used to get people into work? Before the election, they told a very different story. The Prime Minister visited Merseystride, a social enterprise helping the long-term unemployed, during the election. He said to them that the future jobs fund was “a good scheme”. I hope that he will remember that visit. Then he said:

“And good schemes we will keep”.

What did the then shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, who is not in her place, say at that time? She said:

“The Conservative position on the Future Jobs Fund…has been misrepresented by certain groups in the media. We have no plans to change existing Future Jobs Fund commitments”.

As for the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate, he said on behalf of the Liberal Democrats:

“We have no plans to change or reduce existing government commitments to the Future Jobs Fund. We believe that more help is needed for young people not less.”

So there we have it—a breaking of Tory and Liberal election promises. There has been no evidence, and no consultation with the voluntary sector. So much for the big society; this is, in fact, just a big sham. There has been no consultation with young people, and no listening to the thousands of young people who are getting their first chance because of the future jobs fund. These are cuts in help for young people. The Government just don’t get it: if they cut help and support for jobs for young people right now, it will cost all of us more for decades to come. Once again, they will be making the mistakes of the ’80s and ’90s, when they abandoned young people to long-term unemployment. That is not getting people off welfare into work; it is leaving them abandoned on welfare for decades, and we will not support it.